Monday, February 02, 2009

B.A.D. To The Bone

Tomorrow is Blogroll Amnesty Day, which at first blush seems like yet another random traffic-generating scheme of somebody's, but it really has a colorful and tragic history. Jon Swift was alarmed to learn that 'amnesty' was a euphemism for 'delete.' Some major blogs did a Stalinist style purge of all the little blogs on their blogroll and granted themselves amnesty from their actions. Rather than cotton to that, Jon Swift and skippy the bush kangaroo decided to turn it around and make the occasion a celebration of little blogs.

To participate, you are supposed to highlight five blogs smaller than your own. Thanks to the long tail of blogging, there are always blogs smaller than yours. Yes, that means even you. My problem was how to identify which ones were actually smaller than me. I respect and admire all the blogs on my blogroll and that sort of stat-measuring contest struck me as a little unseemly, but I had to go by something.

Nonetheless, I ran each blog through Technorati to get their “Authority” which is just a measure of how many other blogs link to them. It turns out that of the blogs I read, thanks to my endless BlogWhoring and LinkGrubbing, I’m bigger than about two-thirds of them. Since that didn't seem right, I ran the urls through Alexa.com which claims to measure traffic. By that ranking, I came closer to the middle of the pack, which sounds about right.

Now, none of the blogs I put on my blogroll are huge by any means. The Biggest Swinging Dick on the list is Blogography who is still small potatoes compared to Dooce and her ilk, proving yet again there is no justice in this world. So among the blogs that have both lower traffic and lower authority, these folk deserve some more attention.

Trusty Getto: Trusty is one of my oldest and dearest blogfriends. We seem to have struck it off from the start. When I first started reading him, was going through an ugly divorce, but since then he seems to have found happiness with a new lady friend since he doesn't talk much about his personal life any more. He is a prominent ambulance chaser lawyer in Ypsilanti and his blog has been outed, so nowadays he writes a lot of good insidery stuff about Michigan and local politics. He seems destined for higher office some day. And he has the least hair of any headbanger I know.

Mooselet Musings: Another blogger that has been with me from the start is Mooselet who is an expatriate American married and living in Australia. For some reasons Americans down under write great blogs.

Baltimore Diary: Claude is an old buddy from the early days of The Comics Curmudgeon that just turns out to live in Baltimore, the capitol of comics-snarking. His blog sometimes cut to the bone with his takes on the Baltimore City Schools bureaucracy. I just feel bad that I keep snubbing his very excellent parties.

FlasshePoint: Yet another Comics Crumudgeon buddy, Flasshe has an excellent random thoughts style blog that veers from topic to topic, much like mine, only wittier and more succinct. I keep wanting to steal features from him like the Pet Peeve Of The Day and the Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog.

Architectural Dance Society: Just the title alone is a keeper. 2fs is perhaps my most intellectually deep blogger-reader-commenter and has a fantastic blog about music I have never, ever heard. But he always makes it fascinating and relevant. Frankly, it shocks me that my blog just barely edges his out in those clearly useless statistics. A guy this smart needs to much more widely read.

A Little Night Music: For music a little closer to my tastes, I read The Mistresses of the Dark excellent blog. She is a huge Elvis Costello fan and always has excellent lists on Fridays. She is also lots of fun and just a day-brightener every time I read her blog.

The Conical Glass: I've noticed that an awful lot of my blogroll is music oriented, even though my blog really isn't. Sue does my other links one better in that she actually owns a record company and a web design firm. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, so she gets to go to all sorts of unique cultural events I can only dream of. She is an erstwhile Baltimoron as well, so we also have that connection.

Grateful Dating: Jamy holds a special place in my heart because she actually asked to be on my blogroll. I live vicariously through her various dating travails and her active life in DC. She recently got back from a six-month sojourn in France of which I am deeply frenvious.

That brings up my Blogrolling In Our TimeSpy Tribute which may or may not pre-date Jon Swift's Liberal Blogrolling Policy. To be on my blogroll is to be read by at least one person. I read every blog on my list, big or small, at least 3-4 times a week and sometimes daily. The blogroll is hand-coded and is in an order that makes sense only to me. It is not reflective of anything resembling favoritism, size, topic, or frequency of commenting. I infrequently drop people from it and since they never seem to notice it's just as well.

My only pang is in calling any of these blogs "small". There are no small blogs, just great blogs that don't get read as much as they should.

13 comments:

You know I should get out more. I never hear about these things until its too late. But I will check out these for fun. My blog roll is a monster of my own creation and hopelessly difficult to go all the way through very often. I visit as many as I am able.

What seems like eons ago now . . . I started following your blog from a link at Josh's site. I used to make snarky comments and follow all the threads and . . . well, I had a bambino (whom I love but who drastically cuts into my blogging time).I felt a wave of nostalgia to see some CC posters of old linked in your site. I have some new RSS feeds to follow.Thanks much. Alas, most of the small or obscure blogs that I read are mommy related so probably not much universal appeal.

Thankee for the blog love. It is indeed an honor to be mentioned among such esteemed company.

I find it interesting that we "met" through the CC site, even though I haven't commented there in a very long while. The time commitment involved for perusing comments there (as entertaining as they are) just overwhelmed me and I gave up some time ago. I have a hard enough time keeping up with all the blogs I read.

Funny you should mention blog rolls. I keep mine tucked away in a drop-down box and never look at it. Because of that, it is hopelessly outdated and not representative of who I read or recommend. Therefore, I was considering just getting rid of it altogether. What's your take on that? Do you think anyone would even notice or care? Do you care if you're on someone's blogroll?

Hmmm, how do you like that... I've blatantly whored your own comments.